Donation Request for Reward Items for hardworking Intensive Reading students

I'm asking for donated items to reward my Intensive Reading Sophomore (10th grade) students with at the end of the semester for at home reading. These students are working hard to bring their reading comprehension scores to grade level and some have read over 1000 pages at home. Help me encourage them with rewards for our December reading celebration!

https://www.facebook.com/events/319756671496572/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

These students are working hard to improve their reading abilities, be on grade level, and graduate high school!

I have two classes of intensive reading students who are working hard to raise their reading levels. Help me reward their additional practice reading at home with donate prizes for our end of semester party. The kids cleaned me out a bit in our first semester party. I had two reading students with over 1000 pages and many more who had read hundreds of pages at home, something they had never done before!

Some reward ideas include:

Young Adult literature books (the students have reading levels between 3rd and 10th grade)

Gift cards

Games (card games, board games, video games)

Warm clothing

Snacks

Posters

Backpack

school supplies

Portable technology like an iPod or Nano

Contact me with ideas you have to make a donation. 

 

Resiliency is a Family Trait

article in the Great Bend Tribune about my cousins, aunt, and uncle:

A Father's Pride Larned player follows playoff footsteps 28 years later http://www.gbtribune.com/section/41/article/62302/ By Jim Misunas Area Reporter jmisunas@gbtribune.com

Larned's Jeromy Bartz runs behind blockers Jeramie Kramer (53) and Skyler Hoch (52) against Pratt. Bartz wore both No. 5 and No. 58 on the night.

LARNED — When Jeromy Bartz plays in Larned High’s first football playoff game in 28 years, he’ll think of his father.
He always does.
Larned (7-2) travels today as a heavy underdog against state-ranked Andale (9-0), a Class 4A perennial state contender.
But Jeromy and his freshman brother, Brandon, are accustomed to accepting challenges without their father Michael, who died in July due to a heart attack. Their parents, Michael and Sandi, were Larned High classmates who were destined to be together.
Jeromy’s father, Michael Bartz, played on Larned’s last playoff team in 1985. But Michael didn’t get a chance to see the first playoff appearance for his sons.
“We’d talk about football often,” Jeromy said. “I know he’d be proud of us. I think about him all the time.”
Nothing has come easy for Larned football, which has slowly gained momentum the past two years under the quiet confidence of head coach A.B. Stokes.
Pratt High led 14-7 last week in the fourth quarter against Larned, which had its playoff hopes on the line.
“Last year, we might have panicked, but this year we’ve been behind and come back,” Bartz said. “We’ve learned to stay calm and keep fighting and winning one play at a time.”
Sure enough, Larned quarterback Easton Palmer flipped the momentum with a 66-yard touchdown pass to Brayden Smith. A few plays later, Trey Kraisinger returned an interception 32 yards for the game-winning touchdown. Jamil Shoemaker added an insurance touchdown for good measure in a 27-14 victory.  It marked Larned's first victory over Pratt since 1996.
“It took a long time to sink in what we’d done because nothing like has ever happened to us,” Bartz said. “I give all the credit to our whole senior class working together as leaders.
“This year, we expected more out of ourselves,” he said. “We figured ‘Why not us?’ We worked hard every day and no one deserved it more.”
Jeromy is the Indians’ most versatile players. When the 5-8, 185-pounder lines up in the backfield, he’ll wear No. 5. But coach Stokes occasionally plays him at offensive guard when he’s No. 58 or No. 66, which his uncle Arlan Bartz used to wear for the Larned Indians. He’s one of Larned’s leading tacklers at inside linebacker.
“I’d rather play defense,” he said.
Jeromy credits coach Stokes and his staff for gradually instilling a more positive attitude.
“When I started high school, no one talked about the football team and when we got behind, we stayed down,” he said. “But coach Stokes changed our attitudes and started stressing the weight room.”
Stokes’ other message was the football players needed to support the school’s other teams. More than 20 football players attended Larned’s first state volleyball appearance since 1971 last weekend.
“It was good team building,” he said.
He said the Indians are matching opponent's work ethic. The Indians have met the challenge physically at the line of scrimmage.
“Now, we’ve gotten guys talking about football and guys out who haven’t played football before,” he said. “The big difference is we’ve gotten on the weights.”
Jeromy has big playoff dreams, but he’s realistic.
“It’s really a good opportunity to test our mettle against one of top teams in Class 4A,” he said.

Jeromy is number 5 on defense.

Michael Bartz, younger brother of my father Randy

On the difficulty of writing on a recent loss

Writing about my mother has been hard.  In fact, I’ve covered every member of the family known to have myotonic dystrophy except her.  I’ve spent about a month not writing about her after writing a great deal in a short time about my brother and myotonic dystrophy.  I’m not sure what has made writing about my mother so hard. Maybe I figure I don’t have the time to cry, or maybe I just don’t want to write the most important story of my life in 20 minute increments after Eli goes to bed.

My mother’s last month in the hospital (or was it two?) was probably the most turbulent and transformational time of my life.  My first child was three months old when my mother was on her deathbed.  I was nursing my son when the life support was stopped on my mother.  Life and death danced together that month in the way that preteen boys dance with preteen girls, an awkward slowness with a promise of better days to come.  

Tonight I’ve written two paragraphs in 10 minutes.  I don’t know what I felt in that hospital. I don’t remember how long my mother was in the hospital.  None of it looking back makes sense, the timeline isn’t clear, I’m not sure if I’m angry, or sad, or purposefully numb.  I don’t want to look at the medical records, I’m not sure how to obtain them.  We've talked a few times; however, my father doesn’t really like to talk about it often. I don't either.

I was angry at the doctors at times, angry at myself for not noticing, angry at God.  I was thankful for the visitors, thankful for still having my mother, even if she couldn’t talk to me, thankful for the life God gave me.  I was confused about what was happening, strangely fatalistic, blindly hopeful, and yet peacefully resigned.  I wanted more time, I wanted it to end faster, I wanted to change the past, I wanted a different future.  I wanted my mother to hold me, talk to me, teach me how to raise a child, listen to me cry about the loss of sleep an infant brings, come live with me for the first six months of when I returned to work and watch Eli. 
 
My life changed when my mother went into the hospital.  The night I got the phone call my mother-in-law was at our house having a serious family talk with my husband.  I took the phone call from my father on the back porch.  He said he had taken mom to the ER, but it didn’t seem like anything serious.  I tried to wait until Daniel and my mother-in-law were done talking to drop my family’s trouble in the middle of their conversation.  I should have went then.  I should have told Daniel immediately and taken off for Great Bend. Then maybe I could have talked to my mother when she was in the hospital.  I went that night, but already she couldn’t speak. 

I’m not sure why she couldn’t speak.  I don’t remember if she were too drugged, sleeping, or if the tracheotomy tube were already down her neck.  I’m pretty sure it was the tube was already down her neck; I remember she couldn’t get the surgery to put the tubing
on the outside of her neck for a while because it was a small town and the doctor who would perform the surgery kept having to leave town or do other things.

I’m happy and I have regrets, I’m at peace and I’m unresolved. How does a daughter make sense of the death of her mother?  How do the living grapple with the nature of death?  Do we have good answers?  Will I be able to write about my mother later?  Will I understand God’s plan in my mother’s final months?  Will I one day have a good answer for myself about why I was born without the genetic strain that took my mother and brother?  Do I have to understand the morality, rationality, or even remember the details of the situation to write about it?

                I miss my mother.  I loved her.  I am formed and built by her love.  She was an amazing woman, and I carry her spirit in my heart.  The painting of mother and child that she kept in my nursery is on the wall in Eli’s nursery.  I don’t know what to think, I don’t know what to write, I’m not really sure what I learned, I can’t really tell you how I felt. 

                My favorite answer to life’s questions lately? “That’s life”.  Sometimes the complexity of life doesn’t have much room for questions, and sometimes living trumps understanding.  I’m not going to wait on living until I have understanding, not going to stop feeling because I’m not sure what I felt.  I want to write about my mother.  I want to understand myself and my life enough to write about it.  I don’t yet. I’m living, I’m praying, I’m thinking, and I’m trying.  I just don’t have great answers yet.  That’s life.

                So for now, I’m content trying to write about why I really can’t write about the loss of my mother.  Here’s to time, prayer, and reflection…

((originally posted April 4, 2013 at 10:07pm on facebook notes))

 

Mom helping me paint in 2007

What my mother taught me about playing

Growing up moving so often with my father in the military and working full time (more than full time as a military man), my mom was my best friend when I was young.  She played with me often, whether it were Legos, or dolls, or reading to me, my mother helped shape my life with my early childhood education through play.  As a high school teacher, I know how important early education is and see the gaps and holes that can be in a student's learning by high school if the student came from homes without much parent/guardian to child interaction.  I am THE most important person in Eli's life, and I need to be aware of my impact on his future.  Playing with my son is one of the best gifts I can give him, and a gift my mother gave me often.  I'm smarter because my mother played with me, and hopefully between my husband building cool tracks like this and my investment in my son, Eli will find more doors opened then closed as he grows.

Via Christi St. Francis Hopsital help

I need help remembering what is on the painted glass mural art in the hallway of the east entrance of Via Christi St. Francis in Wichita from the parking garage along Santa Fe.  I would like a picture or description of the artwork.  It would fit the description in the following excerpt:

        After the flight from Hays to Wichita, my mother would have to be sedated often to completely eliminate the lung infection.  My mother’s medicines had been adjusted to attempt to stabilize her heart rate for the flight, which succeeded, but the infection still needed to be combated.  My father warned me that the adjustment time may be an unpleasant time as the medicinal cocktail my mother was receiving gave her vertigo and at times made her very anxious when she woke up disoriented, which would get worse in a new environment.  He asked me to stay home for a few days, in part so he could do what was necessary to keep Jo Lyn calm and help adjust to her new surroundings, but also he sensed how hectic the situation was to a new mother with a husband returning to work for the academic year.  I spent some time trying to relax and enjoy the little moments of being new parents with a crisis in our immediate proximity.  Those days didn’t have climatic events, but instead the simple moments and joys of family that would keep me sane during what seemed like a catastrophe. 

             When I first went to the Via Christi Hospital St. Francis in Wichita, I went with my biggest supporter, my husband Daniel, and my littlest man, Eli.  We had to use the GPS to get to the hospital, find the right parking lot, call my dad, and have hit meet us at the entrance to help us get to where my mother was.  This hospital was larger, in a part of Wichita near train tracks and industrial areas.  Perhaps it was from the car port, or maybe the color scheme was different, but the hallways feel darker in my memory.  The main hallway from that parking garage had a mural of a tree with many leaves as donors, and a painted glass mosaic of something Christian but not quite unique enough to remember.  This hospital wasn’t like the newly built Hays ICU area with overly white walls and a too clean smell, instead the hallways seemed tight, a little dark, and everything felt a little older, as if funding were somewhat tight. 

            My mother’s room was on the 7^th floor, up through an elevator that wasn’t too white, and wasn’t too clean.  Daniel, Eli, and I went down the hall to the waiting room, a tight room with 6 chairs, two tables, a window looking out at another building and a lot of flat room, and some 1000 piece puzzles to keep children older than Eli occupied.  Eli wasn’t going to be allowed into my mother’s room, and the nurses seemed a bit nervous about Eli being on the floor at all.  While the ICU was overly clean and had mandatory hand sanitizer at the entrance, long term critical care had patients who were chronically sick but not wracked in the intense moments between life and death perhaps except when the patient chose to be. 

            When Randy came back to say that Jo Lyn was awake, Daniel offered to stay with Eli so I could go talk to my mother. 

 

 

The entrance would to the right of where this picture is on the east side of the building coming in from the parking garage.  I would go back there myself to look, but I'm not sure I'm ready to step foot in the building again yet...

Writing Inspiration

from http://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/quotes-about-writing